Lou Rhodes

Where do old ravers go when they retire? They get drunk and go to Lou Rhodes gigs. Tonight the Scala is a sea of dirty blonde dreadlocks and saggy sweatshirts, as the woman who made her name as the voice behind 1990s duo Lamb plays a solo show, filling one of London's larger venues with a touching sense of intimacy.

For her new material, Rhodes has reverted to the folky traditions of her parents, stripping away the electronics that made Lamb so popular with a drug-enhanced generation and replacing them with classically trained instrumentalists. Gone are the jungle breaks, but Rhodes' distinctive voice remains, a luxuriant purr that lies somewhere between Sinead O'Connor and Stevie Nicks.

Rhodes now lives in a commune in rural Surrey, where she moved with her children after the break-up of her marriage. Her gregarious nature is plain to see here: as she sits strumming her guitar and talking to the audience, she seems to know half of them personally.

The songs, taken from her recently released album Beloved One, are lovely, but perhaps a little too comfortably so. They follow the familiar formula for spine-tingling songs: vibrato violin? Check. Voice slithering around the note breathily before reaching an occasional high note? Check. Dramatic pause before the crescendo? Check. And lines such as "Save me with all the love you can give/ Save me cos I'm lost and I wanna live," are hardly groundbreaking - although they seem heartfelt. An encore of old Lamb favourite Gabriel is, of course, a winner: Rhodes is on safe ground here. Yet a little more danger and a little less comfort might be exactly what she needs.